Page 111 - UTOPIA

‘The Utopians call those nations that come and ask mag-
istrates from them Neighbours; but those to whom they have
been of more particular service, Friends; and as all other
nations are perpetually either making leagues or breaking
them, they never enter into an alliance with any state. They
think leagues are useless things, and believe that if the com-
mon ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of
promises will have no great effect; and they are the more
confirmed in this by what they see among the nations round
about them, who are no strict observers of leagues and trea-
ties. We know how religiously they are observed in Europe,
more particularly where the Christian doctrine is received,
among whom they are sacred and inviolable! which is partly
owing to the justice and goodness of the princes themselves,
and partly to the reverence they pay to the popes, who, as
they are the most religious observers of their own prom-
ises, so they exhort all other princes to perform theirs, and,
when fainter methods do not prevail, they compel them
to it by the severity of the pastoral censure, and think that
it would be the most indecent thing possible if men who
are particularly distinguished by the title of ‘The Faithful’
should not religiously keep the faith of their treaties. But
in that new-found world, which is not more distant from
us in situation than the people are in their manners and
course of life, there is no trusting to leagues, even though
they were made with all the pomp of the most sacred cere-
monies; on the contrary, they are on this account the sooner
broken, some slight pretence being found in the words of
the treaties, which are purposely couched in such ambigu-

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